A. Saudargas: I entered politics and diplomacy without a tie. At that time, we were people straight from the street

SUMMARY

“Kazimira Prunskienė stopped me in the Seimas chamber and asked, ‘Do you speak any English?’ She was forming the first government of restored Lithuania. That’s how I was offered the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs,” recalls Ambassador Algirdas Saudargas, the first foreign minister of re-established Lithuania.

According to him, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at that time existed only formally — in reality, it was a KGB-controlled structure used to monitor the Lithuanian diaspora. In his conversation with Artūras Jonkus, Ambassador Saudargas explains how the MFA had to be built not from zero but from a negative starting point, dismantling the Soviet-era apparatus first. He also recounts receiving a government order to leave the country shortly before January 13, 1991.

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